1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, a finisher apparatus, a print control apparatus that is capable of controlling the finisher apparatus, a printing system including these apparatuses, a print control method, and a computer-readable storage medium storing a program.
2. Description of the Related Art
In existing printing systems such as print on demand (POD) systems, a job ticket is printed and ejected by a printer together with the content included in the job when the printer and a nearline finisher operate cooperatively in a nearline manner. An operator will perform paper feeding and paper ejecting operations on the basis of the content of the job ticket. In such a nearline cooperative operation, the paper feeding method of the nearline finisher is fixed, and hence, the printer has to eject paper using a paper ejection method that matches the paper feeding method supported by the nearline finisher. There are two paper ejection methods; one is a face-down ejection method where paper is ejected with the printed surface facing down, the other is a face-up ejection method where paper is ejected with the printed face facing up.
In such a printing system where printing and finishing processes are performed by separate apparatuses, an operator has to determine whether or not a finishing process needs to be additionally performed for the printed media printed by a printer. Hence there is a problem in which a possible human error may prevent a desired output based on correct processing from being obtained.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2007-60097 discloses an example technology that prevents such a human error from occurring. In this technology, in order to allow an operator to know what necessary operation is to be performed for printed media, a printer attaches a banner page and displays a manipulation menu, thereby notifying the operator of the appropriate processing to be performed for a print job.
A generally used method is to print, together with the content of a job, a job ticket, which describes operation instructions showing what finishing process is to be performed for the printed media. However, there is a problem in which the job ticket printed by a printer is ejected beneath the printed media in the case of face-down printing, thus making the job ticket difficult to access for the operator.